Its not about being more or less martial, or a waza being more or less painful. Ellis's post points out the key concept: the issue here is gratuitous pain, hurting uke one iota more than you have to. Aikido is a budo, yes, and therefore inherently dangerous. But why should it be deliberately made more dangerous or painful than it has to be?

I think the posts were originally in the Hypocrisy in Aikido thread and the posts on Terry Dobson and Arikawa Sensei were split off. The particular context was the treatment of foreigners in the Aikikai Hombu Dojo.

None of the shihans of Arikawa Sensei's vintage teaches there any more, but foreigners are still regarded as something of a separate community there, and therefore as something of a target in Japan's ijime-based culture. Ijime is usually translated as bullying or persecution and exists everywhere, but in Japan it has a wider connotation that this and especially focuses on those who are, or are perceived to be, different. The crude and boisterous humor of some TV shows has an element of it.

I cannot stress too much that aikido's pretensions to be a JAPANESE art based on harmony and peace have to be understood in a certain context. The AI of aikido does not really mean harmony, which is usually rendered in Japanese as WA. WA ˜a is the second character in the word Yamato ‘å˜a, which is the ancient name for Japan. A conclusion drawn by some is that non-Japanese do not really understand WA.